Cosmetics (or so called makeup), in addition to simple cleansing products, are currently considered as substances used to enhance person appearance. The main purpose of the cosmetics is to be topically applied to the skin to provide anti-aging, hydration and/or skin activation effects.
When getting old, or due to physiological or environmental factors, human skin develops conditions such as aging, skin roughening, or wrinkling. The skin of a normal young person maintains a certain degree of elasticity and tension. When facial muscles relax the skin reverses to its original condition and wrinkles disappear. However, upon reaching middle age, the skin begins to age and becomes thin, hard, dry, reduces its tension; dermal elastic fibers degenerate and fracture so as to result in reduced tension and reduced elasticity. Therefore, when the facial muscles relax, the skin does not reverse quickly to its original condition and wrinkles will be gradually formed. Moreover, as age progresses the skin and subcutaneous tissues are less firm, when coupled with facial support tissue atrophy or loss and slack muscles, deeper wrinkles will be formed due to the effect of gravity on the skin. Roughened skin is a skin problem resulted from dryness, ultraviolet, irritating substances such as cleansing agents or chemical substances and other important extrinsic factors, or impaired hormonal balance and other important intrinsic factors. It is accompanied by compromised barrier function of the stratum corneum, reduced moisture content in the stratum corneum, hypermetabolic turnover of the epidermis, generation of psoriasis scales resulting in roughened stratum corneum. So, when cells on the skin lose elasticity and moisturizing function, the skin folds, dries and loses radiance.
“Peptide” is a skin care ingredient that attracts considerable interests. It is a small molecule substance composed of amino acids. Since amino acid is the smallest unit of a protein, the volume of a peptide is much smaller than that of an average protein. Peptides are easy to be absorbed by cells in the body and can stimulate human body to generate rapid responses. A peptide is much easier to be absorbed by the skin as compared to collagen, elastin or other macromolecular proteins. As natural ingredients, peptides are less irritating to human body and can be used as skin care products having anti-aging, wrinkle-removing, anti-inflammatory, skin tolerance-strengthening, melanin reducing effects to activate and regenerate tender, elastic and shiny skin. A peptide can be composed of two to several tens of amino acids, for example, a dipeptide is composed of two amino acids, a tripeptide is composed of three amino acids. Polypeptides having small molecular amino acid can penetrate the epidermal layer and reach the basal layer to repair damaged cells with their biological activities.
Therefore, in the era of global aging and high demand for skin care, it is an important issue how to develop a novel ingredient for skin care solution in order to provide water retaining and moisturizing effect.